British military chiefs accuse underspending NATO members of getting ‘free ride’ ahead of summit

NATO leaders this week will be asked to approve creation of a high-readiness force and the stockpiling of military equipment and supplies in Eastern Europe to help protect member nations there against potential Russian aggression, the alliance’s secretary general said Monday.

President Barack Obama and Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron will also tell their NATO allies to increase defence spending. They were backed last night by British military chiefs who accused underspending members of freeloading.

“The Readiness Action Plan will ensure that we have the right forces and the right equipment in the right place, at the right time,” Anders Fogh Rasmussen said. “Not because NATO wants to attack anyone. But because the dangers and the threats are more present and more visible. And we will do what it takes to defend our allies.”

Rasmussen told a news conference the proposed new force could be composed of several thousand troops contributed on a rotating basis by the 28 NATO countries.

Obama and leaders of NATO’s other member countries open a summit Thursday in Wales that is expected to be dominated by how the U.S-led alliance should react over the long term to Russian actions toward Ukraine and the implications for security in Europe.

The U.S. president and the U.K. Prime Minister will call on European leaders to do more to defend the continent from its increasing threats by meeting commitments to spend at least two per cent of GDP on defence.

NATO members at the two-day meeting in Newport will debate how to cope with crises in Ukraine and Iraq.

The White House said military spending was a “top priority.” But diplomats believe that the plea will be rejected by countries who complain they are still emerging from recession and refuse to be held to an “arbitrary” spending target.

Currently only four NATO members reach the two per cent target, including Britain and America.

The Canadian government has baulked at the rise from its current level of one per cent.

Britain has refused to commit to the target after this parliament and defence chiefs fear the military budget will dip below the two per cent mark soon.

Former senior military commanders said last night that NATO allies must shoulder their share of the military burden and stop relying on others to prop them up.

Lord West, a former head of the Navy, said: “People in a number of countries have been willing to get a free ride and are not spending. If you look at Europe, it’s only France and the UK who meet the target.

“NATO has to realize that it’s no good having a broken force.

“Putin and other countries think they are talking the talk but they are not walking the walk. It’s just bluff.

“It does mean that he thinks they are not really serious about holding their own on the world stage.”

Lord Dannatt, a former head of the Army, said Europe’s failure to fund its forces led many Americans to question “why Europe cannot stand on its own security feet”.

NATO has to realize that it’s no good having a broken force

He said: “The sad fact is that with the exception of a small number of European NATO member states – which include the UK and France principally – the vast majority of the armed forces of other European states lack real usable capability and their governments often lack the political will to fund their armed forces properly.”

Diplomatic sources said there was little hope of major European powers pledging big spending increases.

Any summit agreement will fall back on vague language of “aiming to” meet the two per cent target.

In pointed remarks last week, Obama said the summit had to “make sure every country is contributing”.

Wolfgang Schaeuble, the German finance minister, said earlier this year that increasing defence spending from 1.3 per cent could create misunderstandings with Russia.

Robert Menendez, the hawkish Democrat chair of the U.S. Senate foreign relations committee, urged Obama and the West to provide Ukraine with “defensive weapons”.

“Thousands of Russian troops are here with tanks, missiles, heavy artillery,” he told the U.S. broadcasters CNN in Ukraine. Putin had “sized up the West” and determined that tough sanctions and military aid would not be forthcoming.

However, Obama and European leaders have ruled out any “military solution” to the crisis in Ukraine.

Since the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by Russia in March, Poland and other Eastern European members of NATO have demanded the alliance take a more active and high-profile role in their defence. Other allies, though, have been wary of doing anything that might endanger a 1997 agreement with Moscow under which NATO pledged not to base substantial forces in Eastern Europe on a permanent basis.

The compromise NATO officials appear to have worked out is the pre-positioning of equipment and supplies in Eastern Europe “so this force can travel light, but strike hard if needed,” in Rasmussen’s words.

Backed by air and naval assets, the unit would be a “spearhead” that could be deployed at very short notice to help NATO members defend themselves against any threat, including Russia, Rasmussen said.

Meanwhile, Russia’s foreign minister urged diplomats at a new round of talks on easing the crisis in Ukraine to push for an immediate, unconditional ceasefire between Ukrainian government troops and pro-Russian separatists.

The talks later Monday in Minsk, the Belarusian capital, come as Ukrainian troops are facing a resurgent rebel force. In the past week, the rebels have opened a new front along the southeastern Azov Sea coast and are pushing back after losing ground in the previous several weeks.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also said Russia would not intervene militarily in Ukraine, defying reports by the Ukrainian government, NATO and Western nations that Russia has already sent troops, artillery and tanks across Ukraine’s southeast border to reinforce the separatists.

“There will be no military intervention,” Lavrov told students at Moscow State Institute of International Relations on Monday, the first day of classes for schools and universities across the country. “We call for an exclusively peaceful settlement of this severe crisis, this tragedy.”

The envoys, who last met in July, included representatives of Ukraine, Russia and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. A separatist leader, Andrei Purgin, also was to take part.

Purgin told the Interfax news agency that the separatists’ priority was to win recognition of their independence in eastern Ukraine, which has a large Russian-speaking population. He said they also were willing to discuss the exchange of prisoners and a temporary ceasefire.

On Monday, Ukrainian National Security Council spokesman Col. Andriy Lysenko said Ukrainian forces had been ordered to retreat from the airport in Luhansk, the second-largest rebel-held city, in the face of an intensifying assault that he blamed on “professional artillery gunmen of the Russian armed forces.”

Russia consistently denies allegations that it has sent troops or equipment into Ukraine. But Lysenko said Monday that “not less than four battalions and tactical groups of the Russian armed forces are active in Ukraine.”

A battalion consists of about 400 soldiers.

The assault on the Azov Sea coast that began last week has raised concerns that the rebels are aiming to establish a land corridor from Russia to Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Russia annexed in March.

On Sunday, missiles were fired from the shore at two Ukrainian coast guard cutters about five kilometres out to sea, sinking one of them, Lysenko said. He said eight crewmen were rescued, but the Interfax news agency cited a spokesman for the border guards’ service as saying two crewmen were missing and seven were rescued.

Fighting in eastern Ukraine between the separatists and the Ukrainian government in Kyiv began in mid-April after the annexation of Crimea. The fighting has killed nearly 2,600 and forced over 340,000 to flee their homes, according to the U.N.